The small group of freedom fighters turned the corner and skidded to a stop.
"How nice to see you again." Dr. Robotnik said from his place in the middle of the hallway. In fact, he almost filled the hallway with his bulk... and the huge gun he was toting, plus the SWAT-bots behind him, made up for the missing space. It was an imposing picture, and one that Sally, Bunnie, and Daniel did not want to be in front of. Unfortunately, they were.
"Restrain them," Robotnik ordered. The three knew it would be stupid and life-threatening to resist, so they didn’t try as metal rings were clamped around their necks and wrists. Sally blinked and shook her head as a deep drowsiness came over her, muddling her thoughts.
*Must be some sort of negative polarized current in these things,* she thought to herself, automatically changing her ideas into semi-meaningless technobabble. *Sucking normal bio-energy.*
"Now, princess," she heard Robotnik ask, "Tell me who is in my city, and where they are."
"Not on your life," Sally muttered sleepily.
*ZZAP!* An electric charge ran through the bindings, and Sally clamped down on a scream of pain. The metallic tang of scorched fur tickled her nose, and she felt mildly sick.
"That hedgehog… he is in the city, yes?" Asked the cyborg villain.
"If you’re so sure," forced Sally through her gritted teeth, "why are you bothering to ask- AAHH!" She screamed as the electricity went off again, catching her unprepared. She landed on her hands and knees, shivering again as the sleep field was turned back on.
"Sally!" called Bunnie and Daniel at the same time.
Panting as the pain made her vision blur, the princess forced herself to her feet from where she had fallen. "Won’t… give in… you sick, twisted bastard…" she screamed for a third and final time as the electricity cut in again, the sound and the pain going on and on and on, even after her vision had gone black.
Xelphene stared at Marcus, eyes wide in horror. "No…" she gasped, then cried out, louder, "NO!"
Sonic made his way to her side. "Hey, X, what-"
The black hedgehog didn’t notice him. She fell to her knees, sobbing. Marcus, who had been standing in a rough approximation of a fighting stance, dropped his arms and stepped back. Knuckles stood shakily and came over, disgust warring with pity and pain on his face. The pain won as he knelt by her side. "Xelphene…" he said quietly.
"No," she said, sobbing. "You saw. Saw what I did. I’m a monster…" She took a deep breath and suddenly stopped crying. "What have I done?" she whispered.
"Do you know what I saw, Xelphene," Marcus asked quietly, "in the instant that my life was torn from me? What I heard, echoed in my own scream? I know not what that fiend, that demon wanted me to know this for, but believe me when I tell you… I saw armies of robots marching into our home… I saw the Valley of Kings dug up and the treasures there melted for their metal… I saw the people dragged to those machines, the roboticizers, to have their life torn from them… I saw the council, or what was left, dragged forth from their homes and made to swear to Robotnik at gun point, and then tossed into the prisons to rot… all except Shanal, who refused, and was shot! I saw children torn from their mothers to be put in pens, so that they might grow before being turned into robots. I heard their screams, Xelphene! I ask you now, what are you going to do about it?"
Xelphene had been weeping silently until now, with Sonic standing by, uncomprehending. "M… me?"
Marcus grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet, his metal hand grasping her flesh one. "Yes, you, Xelphene! You are the only one of us free… the only one who can undo this wrong! You need to, Xelphene. Your hand was in the making of this, your hand needs to undo it."
Sonic stepped in, now. "Woah, woah. What’s going on, here? What’s up with Xelphene? What did she do?"
The black hedgehog refused to meet his gaze. "Horrible things."
"What are you going to do, Xelphene?" Marcus asked again.
Xelphene looked into his eyes, the red, glowing eyes that used to
be blue, and imagined that she could see him how he was, so long ago…
*What are you going to do, Xelphene?*
She raised her hand, ethereal energy sparking between her fingers. "We’re going to free them."
Princess Sally woke to a scream, and it took her a few seconds to realize that it was hers.
"Ahh, good, you’re awake."
The voice seemed to come from all around her, until Sally realized that she was inside a tube. The voice was being piped in, of course…
A tube. A glass tube.
The shock brought her fully to her senses. She was strapped to a metal surface, arms at her sides. She was lying on her back, something new, and the outside of the glass was covered in wires. She could still see Dr. Robotnik’s leer, though, so the setup wasn’t perfect. The wires pulsed with an eerie glow, even through the insulation.
The voice continued in the seconds it took her to make these observations. "Getting information from a robot brain is a time-consuming process, and an iffy one at best. However, I can do it. I would prefer not to, though, so I will ask you politely, first. If you happen to lie, I have your friends outside. If their story differs from yours one iota, and I assure you that that glass tube is soundproof, so you won’t have time to confer, they will die. Painfully."
Sally stayed silent. Robotnik sighed, and continued, "If you insist on this obstinate behavior, I can begin the process. I don’t have to roboticize you all at once, you know. I can start with the toes up."
"Vile machinery," she spat. "Ripping someone’s identity away from them…"
"Oh, I see you have discovered my files. Wonderful thing hard disk backups are, aren’t they? Ah, yes, DNA removal. Built into my new generation of roboticizers, and powered by… You’d never guess: the Chaos Emeralds themselves."
Sally started involuntarily at this information. "Oh, yes," Robotnik chuckled. "I managed to get an energy siphon in the chamber of the emeralds themselves. That idiotic guardian doesn’t even know it’s there. So I’m free to take all the energy I want."
"You… you…" Sally seethed, "You monster!"
"Oh, yes," Robotnik said, "I know!"
Marcus led the way into the prisons, the underground metallic chambers lit with flickering fluorescent light stretching ahead of them. As quietly as could be managed(Someone has found some discarded cloth to tie around Marcus’ feet,) they made their way into the true prisons, past the empty waiting pens where prisoners were held for roboticization. The quartet shivered as they made their way past, some seeing their past, some their future, in these cramped cells.
Finally, they made their way to the long-term cells. There weren’t many of them, and the people inside were cramped three to a cell. Xelphene approached cautiously, not knowing how her appearance would be taken.
The first person to see her was Lord Atcheson, General Dumitral’s twin brother. She winced as his gaze met hers, certain that she would be ripped to pieces where she stood, even through the bars.
"I’m sorry," she whispered.
Everyone noticed her, then. Atcheson came forward. "Sorry?" he snapped. "Oh, yes. Sorry will make it all better." He spat on the floor. "Sorry won’t bring back the dead, highness. Sorry won’t heal our wounds."
"All right!" She snapped back. "I know that. I know that I’ve done awful things… terrible things…" she shivered, then stiffened her spine. "But I know that I was wrong! And we’ve come to get you out of here!"
Atcheson ignored her then, looking straight at Marcus. "What happened?" he asked the robot squirrel.
Marcus glared. "I was put through that damned machine, what else?" he said sharply. "But Xelphene has changed."
Cynthia, an aging mink, stepped up to the bars. "And what caused this sudden change in conscience?"
Xelphene bit her lip. "I lost my memory," she said. "When I got it back, I… I discovered that I loathed the person that I had been."
Nine pairs of eyes glared out from three cells. There had been twelve councilors, and now two were dead because of the woman standing before them. The other, despite what had been done to him, was standing beside her.
Atcheson held her eyes in his for a long time. She dared not breathe. It felt as if her soul was being torn away and melted in his flaming gold eyes.
Finally, he said, "Open the doors."
Robotnik sighed. "All right, Sally. I’m afraid that I will have to attempt to dig the information out of your robot mind. Hope you don’t… mind. Good-bye."
He pushed the lever. It inched downward toward the connection, seeming to take a lifetime. Sally waited for the inevitable with an outward calm, still hoping, somehow, that Sonic would burst through the door and stop it, as he had many times before… or that something, anything would interfere…
The lever clicked into place. Sally stared through the mess of wires and glass at the ceiling, tears in her eyes. It was too late.
The glow around the wiring brightened, until Sally had to close her eyes or be blinded by it. A hum filled the tube, and the whole thing started to shake. Her fur stood on end from the electricity generated.
*Please, let it end,* she thought. *Make it quick…*
Xelphene paused in the middle of the corridor, the nobles around her. "Do you feel that?" she asked Knuckles.
He frowned. "Yes… I think I felt it earlier, when…"
The black hedgehog had stopped listening. She gasped in pain, then reached out to the air in front of her and pulled on something not there. "No… you… don’t!" She said as she tugged on the invisible cord. "Stop… stop!"
Suddenly there was a snapping sound, as of a wire breaking, and Xelphene was hurled to the ground with physical force. The Councilors stood around her, murmuring.
Sonic gave her a hand back to her feet. "Yo, Xelph, what was that?" he asked.
She shook herself all over, as if she was getting water out of her fur. "Someone… was pulling a ton of energy for something."
The blue blur frowned. "Pulling energy? How’dya do that?"
Xelphene shrugged. "With a magnet, or something to that effect. It doesn’t matter. They were pulling it," she pointed, "in that direction. And it didn’t want to go, so I stopped it."
Sonic raised an eyebrow. "Didn’t want to-"
"That’s the only way I can explain it!" she snapped.
"Right," said Knuckles. "I think we should check it out."
Xelphene nodded. "But someone’s got to take the Councilors back to Knothole."
They both looked at Sonic. The blue hedgehog stuck his hands stubbornly on his hips. "No way. I am not going to leave when the fun stuff is happening."
Xelphene frowned. "I need to stay here. I’m the only one who knows where the energy was going."
"I want to come with you," Sonic argued. "I’ve got a power ring. I can get you out of there if something bad happens."
"By the time something bad happens, we could all be dead," Knuckles observed wryly. "It’d be better to have someone along that could keep you from getting energy burns."
"May I be of assistance?"
The assembled furries spun around to see a very large, very smug, and very friendly blue dragon.
"Aris!" Cried Sonic. "You sure can be of assistance. We need to get these guys back to Knothole. Do you think you could…"
"Of course," Aris said, grinning.
The Councilors from Raldinia were quickly settled on the dragon’s back… except for Marcus.
"I’m not going to leave, Xelphene."
"Please, Marcus…"
"No, Xelphene, I’m coming with you." The robot’s eyes lit up with an unearthly glow. "I have a score to settle with that Robotnik fellow."
"Get in line," Sonic quipped.
"I’m coming," Marcus said, "And that’s final."
Shrugging, Aris turned away from the group. "Fine with me," the dragon said. "One less of you to carry. I’ll be back as soon as I can."
The four nodded, waved to her, and set off toward the heart of the city.
The glow faded from around the glass coffin. Sally was amazed to find herself still breathing. She could hear Robotnik’s startled yelp into the microphone, then silence.
So much silence… it was oppressing. It pressed in on her like gelatin, strangling her. Even the metallic hum was better than this… silence. It seemed like there wasn’t enough air.
Robotnik was right about one thing- the capsule was soundproof. When the lights went out, nobody heard Princess Sally Acorn scream.
Xelphene was running toward the source of the ‘pull’ at full blast, the other three right on her heels. She didn’t know why she felt she needed to run, but she did… she needed to get there!
The hallways passed in a blur. Corridor after corridor, unchanging. They barreled into a patrol of SWAT-bots. Unimportant. They crashed through and ignored the alarms. Finally, they came to their objective.
They skidded to a stop on the metal flooring to see Robotnik holding a small piece of equipment that looked like a toaster with a hose and funnel attached to it. The doctor frowned.
"You," Xelphene snarled.
Robotnik only smiled and pointed the funnel of the machine at her. "Ah, you. You’ll do just nicely."
Robotnik pushed the toggle, and the world fell apart.
Xelphene thought she knew pain.
She had felt pain, surely, at times during her childood, getting an ankle broken and such.
She had really hurt when her life had been stripped away in a flash of light, when her DNA had been dissolved.
She knew true pain when Marcus had revealed to her who she really was. What she really was.
That was not pain. This was pain.
Xelphene was sure she screamed, but she didn’t know if she really was screaming, or if some deity had stolen the sound before it came from her mouth. Something was being torn from her, but it didn’t fade into metal oblivion, as the roboticization had. It went on, and on, as if someone was drawing out her life’s blood through pores made of acid, or scalding her with smoke, or pulling her soul through a shredder and using the pieces to mop up the sun. That would not hurt one hundredth as much as the pain she felt now.
It was an onrushing waterfall of pain. A nova of pain. And it went on, and on, and on… and the darkness that promised sanity never came.
Sally was sure she could not breathe.
The darkness, the confinement… it did not matter that she could not see the walls of her prison, she knew they were there. And the air was running out fast, she knew… these tubes were not meant to keep one alive, they were meant to kill.
She knew she would die. She just wished it would be soon.
Marcus could only watch as Xelphene was held captive by the doctor, who trained the funnel on the Queen as if he were sucking the life from her.
Sucking the life…
The roboticized squirrel stepped forward. "Stop."
Robotnik barely looked up. "Ahh, we still need to fix that bug, I see. Guards, take them."
They were besieged by SWAT-bots, quickly outnumbered. They formed a triangle, each striking at the robots in front of them. Metal and oil piled up around them, and still they fought on, the robots coming in wave on wave.
For Marcus, who had lived his life in peace, it was sheerest hell.
Daniel and Bunnie battered on the walls of their prison. The metal refused to budge in the slightest.
Finally, they had to rest. That they turned away from the wall was the only reason that they saw the blue glow start, spread, and disappear, leaving a blue dragon in its wake.
Aris smiled, and ambled over to the door. Setting a claw against it, she pulled, and ripped the door off of its hinges.
"Let’s go," she said. The others nodded.
Daniel was the first into the roboticization room. What he saw made his blood run cold.
"No," he whispered.
Sonic, a robot, and Knuckles were fighting against a horde of SWAT-bots. As he watched, one of them was sent flying by a punch from the echidna, and the three watchers were spattered with oil. Daniel ducked as Bunnie pushed by him, leaping to join the fray. Aris had disappeared somewhere. But that wasn’t what was concerning Daniel.
Xelphene was on her hands and knees in front of Robotnik, grinding her teeth and curling her fingers in pain. She no longer looked like a clone of Sonic, either. She looked… beautiful.
Robotnik was training something on her. It looked like a funnel attached to a hose attached to a box, and it was humming. Daniel didn’t know what it was for, but it was obviously hurting her. He ran forward, throwing his weight into Robotnik.
The fat dictator noticed at the last possible instant. "No!" He cried, but it was too late. The machine was knocked aside by Daniel’s charge, and sent spinning into the air. "It’s unstable!" Robotnik finished, before ducking and covering.
Three things happened quickly.
There was a splintering crash and a scream from the adjoining chamber.
Xelphene gasped in relief and collapsed onto the floor.
Marcus, with inhuman reactions, caught the flying box before it hit the ground, understood what it was going to do, and threw up an electromagnetic shield.
Then the box, and Marcus, exploded.
Xelphene woke up to find herself in a hut at Knothole. Sally and Daniel were at one side of her bed. Atcheson was on the other. She tried to sit up, but Sally pressed her back onto the bed. "Get some rest. You’ve been through a lot," she said.
The black hedgehog coughed, then swallowed, trying to clear her throat. "What…"
Sally’s face tightened. "Marcus… Xelphene I think you should know this right now, bit it isn’t easy…"
"What?" Xelphene struggled to sit up again. "What happened?"
"Sally sighed. "Marcus is dead."
Xelphene sat, shocked, as Sally told her. "He caught that… funnel. Machine. It turned out to be a bomb. He threw up some sort of shield, but it failed after a second… but it’s the only reason we got out alive at all."
That was when Xelphene noticed the tightly bound cuts on Daniel’s arm and chest, and Sally’s hand. She looked down, slightly surprised to find cuts all along her right side, and her own nervous system attested to more on her back. "What… what about everyone else?"
"Bunnie and Knuckles managed to get out fine, because of the line of SWAT-bots in the way. Sonic lost a few of his quills, but he’s otherwise fine. Aris… got me out." Sally shuddered at that last, and flexed her hand nervously. Xelphene noted absently that the cuts on her hand looked less like cuts made by flying metal, but rather like the scoring made by broken glass.
"Aris found the backups of the plans for that roboticizer and trashed them. If Robotnik wants to go that way again, he’ll have to start from square one."
"Good," Xelphene said, shuddering. She was quiet for a time. Then, "Atcheson?"
"Yes?"
She swallowed. "Is there any chance that… any chance at all that the people in Raldinia…"
"No, my liege."
"Don’t call me that!"
The others looked at her, startled. Xelphene levered herself into a sitting position, despite her back and Sally’s protests. "No," she said, "I am not queen of Raldinia any longer. I simply wish to be a Freedom Fighter. Nothing else."
"But…" Protested Atcheson. Daniel was nodding.
"My last official act as queen," she said, "is to order a service for Marcus. Then I simply want to fight, here." She looked at Sally. "Robotnik sill has the children of our valley in holding camps. We need to get them out."
Sally nodded. "Of course."
"Thank you," Xelphene said, than sank back onto the bed. "Thank you. For everything. For my future."
Daniel knelt by her side. Sally and Atchesen left silently, but he didn’t notice. "Are you all right?" he asked.
She shook her head mutely. He took her hand. "Listen. If there’s anything I can get you, just tell me, okay?"
She nodded. "Daniel, when I was… when Robotnik was using that thing…"
"Yes?"
"You were the one that knocked it out of his hands, weren’t you?"
He winced. "Yes. I knocked it into the air." Then, softer, "It’s my fault that Marcus died."
"No," Xelphene said, propping herself up on an elbow so that she could look him in the eye. "That machine… it was sucking the energy from the Emerald."
"What?" Daniel said, surprised.
She nodded. "It was what was powering the roboticizer. It took more energy then the old ones, you see? And it was causing blackouts. I know. He told me. So he set something up to suck the energy from the main Emeralds that Knuckles was guarding. But I broke the connection, so he didn’t have enough power. So he used it on me." She shuddered. "Oh, Daniel, it was like getting my heart ripped out! If you wouldn’t have stopped him…" she shuddered. "I would have been dead. And Sally…"
"Sally would have been a robot," he said.
"Yes. And you may not have gotten out of there alive, anyway." She sank back down to the bed again. "Oh, Marcus!"
Daniel just held her hand, as the former queen cried her way to sleep.
Finis.